Cold War Holidays

Cold War Holidays
Author: Christopher Endy
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2005-12-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0807863513

Moving beyond traditional state-centered conceptions of foreign relations, Christopher Endy approaches the Cold War era relationship between France and the United States from the original perspective of tourism. Focusing on American travel in France after World War II, Cold War Holidays shows how both the U.S. and French governments actively cultivated and shaped leisure travel to advance their foreign policy agendas. From the U.S. government's campaign to encourage American vacations in Western Europe as part of the Marshall Plan, to Charles de Gaulle's aggressive promotion of American tourism to France in the 1960s, Endy reveals how consumerism and globalization played a major role in transatlantic affairs. Yet contrary to analyses of globalization that emphasize the decline of the nation-state, Endy argues that an era notable for the rise of informal transnational exchanges was also a time of entrenched national identity and persistent state power. A lively array of voices informs Endy's analysis: Parisian hoteliers and cafe waiters, American and French diplomats, advertising and airline executives, travel writers, and tourists themselves. The resulting portrait reveals tourism as a colorful and consequential illustration of the changing nature of international relations in an age of globalization.

The End of the Cold War

The End of the Cold War
Author: Kate Riggs
Publisher: Creative Paperbacks
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017-02-07
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 9781628323443

There are certain moments in history that are so significant that they become Turning Points, moments that put a bookmark in time and cause the events that follow to be measured by a different standard. From assassinations to terrorist attacks, from political revolutions to economic crashes, such times are often fraught with conflict and tension. This series puts each event in its historical context and follows the trajectory of its immediate aftermath and continuing global effects today. A timeline of important events adds further historical context, while "Pointing Out" sidebars present related topics and perspectives. A historical account of the end of the Cold War, including the events that sparked conflict and led to peace, the competition for global ideological supremacy, and the lingering aftermath.

Tourism and Travel During the Cold War

Tourism and Travel During the Cold War
Author: Sune Bechmann Pedersen
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020
Genre: Cold War
ISBN: 9780367192129

Focusing on Western tourism behind the Iron Curtain, this chapter introduces the main research questions addressed in the volume: firstly, how and why Eastern Europe became a tourist destination for citizens of the West; secondly what impact this had on the development of a tourism industry in the Eastern bloc; and thirdly to what extent the experiences of Western tourists in Eastern Europe influenced mutual perceptions and Cold War stereotypes of “the other”. The chapter situates these questions in three debates in recent historiography: the history of transnational tourism, of the cultural Cold War, and of mobilities in the supposedly backward and static societies in Eastern Europe.

Holidays in the Danger Zone

Holidays in the Danger Zone
Author: Debbie Lisle
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2016-07-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1452953333

Holidays in the Danger Zone exposes the mundane and everyday interactions between two seemingly opposed worlds: warfare and tourism. Debbie Lisle shows how a tourist sensibility shapes the behavior of soldiers in war—especially the experiences of Western military forces in “exotic” settings. This includes not only R&R but also how battlefields become landscapes of leisure and tourism. She further explores how a military sensibility shapes the development of tourism in the postwar context, from “Dark Tourism” (engaging with displays of conflict and atrocity) to exhibitions of conflict in museums and at memorial sites, as well as advertising, film, journals, guidebooks, blogs, and photography. Focused on how war and tourism reinforce prevailing modes of domination, Holidays in the Danger Zone critically examines the long historical arc of the war–tourism nexus—from nineteenth-century imperialism to World War I and World War II, from the Cold War to globalization and the War on Terror.

The Holiday Makers

The Holiday Makers
Author: Richard K. Popp
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2012-05-16
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0807142867

Between the 1930s and 1960s, the spread of new transportation networks and the democratization of paid vacations struck many observers as a sign that tourism was growing into a folkway of modern American life. Easy mobility and free time lay at the heart of this idealized vision, and vacations were seen as a ritualized expression of the movement and egalitarianism that characterized midcentury modernity. The Holiday Makers tells the story of how advertisers sold tourist travel in popular magazines during this era, transforming consumer culture in the process.

America's Forgotten Holiday

America's Forgotten Holiday
Author: Donna T. Haverty-Stacke
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2009
Genre: History
ISBN: 0814737056

Though now a largely forgotten holiday in the United States, May Day was founded here in 1886 by an energized labor movement as a part of its struggle for the eight-hour day. In ensuing years, May Day took on new meaning, and by the early 1900s had become an annual rallying point for anarchists, socialists, and communists around the world. Yet American workers and radicals also used May Day to advance alternative definitions of what it meant to be an American and what America should be as a nation. Mining contemporary newspapers, party and union records, oral histories, photographs, and rare film footage, America’s Forgotten Holiday explains how May Days celebrants, through their colorful parades and mass meetings, both contributed to the construction of their own radical American identities and publicized alternative social and political models for the nation. This fascinating story of May Day in America reveals how many contours of American nationalism developed in dialogue with political radicals and workers, and uncovers the cultural history of those who considered themselves both patriotic and dissenting Americans.

Thailand in the Cold War

Thailand in the Cold War
Author: Matthew Phillips
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2015-09-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 131770407X

Thailand’s position during the Cold War was ambiguous: the country’s political leadership was very keen to maintain the country’s independence on the world stage, yet at the same time was anxious to establish the country’s credentials as staunchly anti-communist. However, as this book argues, Thailand, though never formally a client state of the United States, was very closely embedded in the Western camp through the commitment of Thailand’s cosmopolitan urban communities to developing a modern, consumerist lifestyle. Considering popular culture, including film, literature, fashion, tourism and attitudes towards Buddhism, the book shows how an ideology of consumerism and integration into a "free world" culture centred in the United States gradually took hold and became firmly established, and how this popular culture and ideology was fundamental in determining Thailand’s international political alignment.

America in the World

America in the World
Author: Frank Costigliola
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 391
Release: 2013-12-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107001463

This volume includes historiographical surveys of American foreign relations since 1941 by some of the country's leading historians. Some of the essays offer sweeping overviews of the major trends in the field of foreign/international relations history. Others survey the literature on US relations with particular regions of the world or on the foreign policies of presidential administrations. The result is a comprehensive assessment of the historical literature on US foreign policy that highlights recent developments in the field.

Visions of Freedom

Visions of Freedom
Author: Piero Gleijeses
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 672
Release: 2013-11-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 146960969X

During the final fifteen years of the Cold War, southern Africa underwent a period of upheaval, with dramatic twists and turns in relations between the superpowers. Americans, Cubans, Soviets, and Africans fought over the future of Angola, where tens of thousands of Cuban soldiers were stationed, and over the decolonization of Namibia, Africa's last colony. Beyond lay the great prize: South Africa. Piero Gleijeses uses archival sources, particularly from the United States, South Africa, and the closed Cuban archives, to provide an unprecedented international history of this important theater of the late Cold War. These sources all point to one conclusion: by humiliating the United States and defying the Soviet Union, Fidel Castro changed the course of history in southern Africa. It was Cuba's victory in Angola in 1988 that forced Pretoria to set Namibia free and helped break the back of apartheid South Africa. In the words of Nelson Mandela, the Cubans "destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor . . . [and] inspired the fighting masses of South Africa."

The Sino-Soviet Alliance

The Sino-Soviet Alliance
Author: Austin Jersild
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2014-02-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1469611600

In 1950 the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China signed a Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance to foster cultural and technological cooperation between the Soviet bloc and the PRC. While this treaty was intended as a break with the colonial past, Austin Jersild argues that the alliance ultimately failed because the enduring problem of Russian imperialism led to Chinese frustration with the Soviets. Jersild zeros in on the ground-level experiences of the socialist bloc advisers in China, who were involved in everything from the development of university curricula, the exploration for oil, and railway construction to piano lessons. Their goal was to reproduce a Chinese administrative elite in their own image that could serve as a valuable ally in the Soviet bloc's struggle against the United States. Interestingly, the USSR's allies in Central Europe were as frustrated by the "great power chauvinism" of the Soviet Union as was China. By exposing this aspect of the story, Jersild shows how the alliance, and finally the split, had a true international dimension.